


I Used To Move You In A Way That You've Never Known

by Pluppelina



Series: I Need Some Fine Wine And You Need To Be Nicer [13]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Hallucinations, M/M, Suicidal Thoughts, trigger warning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-17
Updated: 2012-07-17
Packaged: 2017-11-10 04:43:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/462315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pluppelina/pseuds/Pluppelina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Jim is dead and Sebastian tries to cope.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Used To Move You In A Way That You've Never Known

It's two weeks after Jim died when Sebastian sees him in the street for the first time. Just the back of his head, but it’s enough for Sebastian to break into a run after the man and grab him by the arm. When he turns around, he isn’t Jim anymore.   
  
Sebastian goes for lots of runs after that, trying to keep up some illusion of normalcy. He sets his alarm for oh-six-hundred hours and goes on his runs, because that’s normal, and he makes breakfast for two and always has to throw half away, but that’s okay because it’s normal, too. He pulls the threads to make the organisation run on as it always has, he dry-cleans Jim’s suits, he pays the bills, he kills bad men and good men and any men that need to die, and at the end of the day he goes home to the same home he’s been returning to for the last two years.  
  
There are some things he just can’t do as normal any longer. He can’t sleep in his own bed anymore. It seems too big and too lonely, all of a sudden. At first he doesn’t sleep at all, then he sleeps in Jim’s bed, but after the first two nights his scent has gone away from the sheets and then it’s only a horrible reminder of what once was. Instead, he wears the collar Jim gave him, he curls up on the sofa and, with the telly still on, he uses all the focus and willpower he has to pretend someone is stroking his hair until he eventually falls asleep simply because keeping the charade up takes so much effort. It gets harder and harder every night, and as a consequence, he sleeps more and more.  
  
Wake up. Repeat.  
  
Another week goes by. He keeps seeing Jim at every damn turn, Jim standing in line at the supermarket, Jim smoking casually on his way home, Jim the back of a head, Jim sitting two feet away from him driving his cabs. It hurts more than he cares to admit and he isn’t sure for how long he’ll be able to keep this going.  
  
He smokes, too, because that’s as normal as anything’s ever been. He drinks a lot of whiskey at first but being drunk only makes it hurt more as it makes the hallucinations so much more vivid. Jim, standing over him, smirking, saying, “It’s Moriarty with a capital G, you know...” as the world spins around both of them and it’s a bittersweet pain to hold his hand just an inch from the mirage and imagine he could reach out and feel solid flesh.  
  
What Sebastian should really want from the booze is the hangover. When his head is in so much pain, he’s completely unable to think of anything besides water, greasy hamburgers and more alcohol. Those few hours of peace are something for him to cling to at first, but it isn’t long before he finds himself missing the man too much to be able to shut him out any longer.  
  
So he has stopped drinking, now, and to his own surprise he isn’t smoking anywhere near as much as he could and wants to, because Jim always hated it when he smoked and so not smoking is normal, too, because not letting Jim down is normal. Sebastian can’t stand the thought of letting Jim down, not again, not after what happened last time. It hurts so badly to know that he failed what was towards the end his only job - _his only job_ \- and that it resulted in Jim, dead.  
  
It’s a month before people start asking questions about it. No one has seen the boss, but that’s also normal, because no one ever sees the boss, and they have chatted with him and texted him, but he hasn’t called anyone and soon enough the rumour that something is wrong spreads like wildfire - and naturally, it all ties back to Sebastian. To have the vicious men Jim employed glare suspiciously at him is far from pleasant. Normally, he would have shot them down at point blank range, but now, all he sees in their eyes is Jim’s own disappointment with him and he can’t bring himself to pull the trigger.  
  
It’s not that Sebastian finds himself in this sort of trouble because he doesn’t do his job, because he does. He’s superb at it, too, because he feels it’s the least he can do, but he still isn’t Jim Moriarty, and there’s a special brush stroke to Moriarty crimes that Sebastian just can’t seem to copy. He’s bright and he knows how the system works, but he isn’t a genius, and he is in debilitating pain whenever he isn’t asleep.  
  
It’s just around that time, with his staff suspicious of him, that Sebastian sits on the tube and he realises something. There are no less than two different possible Jim’s right there, one that he can see and one that he can simply hear. He’s looking forward to the highlight of his day, which is going home to spend another night on the sofa with the shadow of a dead man comforting him, when he suddenly realises that he has a choice. He doesn’t have to sit here and wonder for how much longer he’ll be able to feed the clients pretty little lies, and he doesn’t have to sit here and wonder whether there actually is someone with a lilting Irish voice talking on the phone just out of view or if it’s all in his head, just like everything else always is. He doesn’t have to sit here and wonder when, exactly, he’s going to go mad.  
  
He doesn’t think he is now, but he suspects he’s well on his way. Jim once said that it wasn’t insanity if he could separate what was real from what wasn’t. Sebastian can. His problem is that he wishes he couldn’t, because then he could be with Jim again. Insanity, to Sebastian, would feel like something akin to relief.  
  
But what a way to live - so pathetic. Jim wouldn’t have liked that. Jim always said that what he liked about Sebastian was how strong he was, and look at him now... He can barely keep the organisation from falling apart because of doubt, he can barely keep himself from falling apart because Jim has left him and he can’t even bring himself to wish for anything but Jim back. So Sebastian, sitting there, on the tube, starts to think of ways to go down that would actually befit Jim Moriarty’s second hand man, and has another realisation - it was really obvious all along.


End file.
